BAGHDAD, Jan. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a surprise visit to Iraq on Sunday, showing appreciation to the British troops stationed in the southern part of the war-torn country.

    Blair met the soldiers deployed in and near the second biggest Iraqi city of Basra shortly after he visited an Iraqi police academy in Zubair, 20 km south of Basra.

    About 140 former Iraqi policemen were being retrained in the camp, where coalition experts gave "integration" courses as part ofthe general efforts to create a 250,000-strong new security force to police post-Saddam Iraq.

    In a speech delivered to the military servicemen at the Shuaiba logistic base outside Basra, Blair said the British forces were winning both the battles and the Iraqis' hearts and minds.

    He said people in Britain were absolutely proud of the job done by the British armed forces in Iraq whatever "different opinions people had towards the wisdom of conflict."

    Describing Iraq as a "test case," Blair justified the US-Britishinvasion as important in toppling the repressive former regime and confront the threat of prohibited weapons.

    Britain, the staunchest ally of the United States in the global war on terror, took the initial offensive on Basra in March 2003 and has around 10,000 troops deployed in southern Iraq currently.

    The area, mainly inhabited by Shiite Muslims, remained calm compared with the north, where US forces have lost 217 soldiers to the daily insurgence since US President George W. Bush declared themajor fighting over on May 1.

    Reports about the unannounced visit emerged half an hour after Blair arrived midday Sunday in Basra on a military cargo plane fromthe Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

    The morale-boosting visit came after similar trips paid by Bush on Thanksgiving Day, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar on Dec. 20 and Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller on Nov. 11.

    It was Blair's second visit to the country in the wake of the Iraq war.

    He first visited the British contingent on May 29, when BBC reported allegations about his government's deliberate exaggerationof the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Enditem